Following Sarah’s lead, here’s a set of our photos from the great May/Dahlberg Hilton Head Vacation of 2005. It was a wonderful week, bookended by four looooonng days of car travel, which is the kind of hardcore traveling I haven’t done in I don’t know how many years. I really thought that two back to back days in the car would be too much for Carl, but he came through with flying colors — at least until the blanket-and-juice-related meltdown forty-five minutes from home on the way back to Columbus on Sunday.

As it turns out, Hilton Head is HOT in the summer. Who knew? (It’s not like it’s hundreds of miles closer to the equator than Ohio, or that it’s on the coast, or that’s it’s JULY, or anything.) The one day that I played golf, Matt and I were making like the Wicked Witch of the West on the front nine. I’m pretty sure I filled and drank an entire cup of water on every hole. Kind of killed my enthusiasm for doing anything outside of the air conditioning, after that — I had wanted to rent and ride bikes at some point, but between not really having a schedule conducive to extended bike rides and the sheer physical assault of going outside to slow roast, I don’t really feel like I missed anything.

Well, except for the beach. We went on Monday morning with the kids, but that was all for us. Carl seemed to enjoy the beach part of the beach, but not so much with the ocean. Don’t know if it was the size and scope of the water, the sound of the waves — which were barely knee-high at all, but to a toddler, might as well have been mountainous walls of water — whatever it was, he was Out, and we didn’t get another chance to try again. Next time, maybe. The backyard pool was much better — he wasn’t completely comfortable with it, but he didn’t mind it by the end of the week. I’m half afraid he’s going to look at me this week and say, “Swim in the pool?”, and I’ll have to figure out how to tell him that Mommy and Daddy don’t exactly have an in-ground heated pool and jacuzzi sitting in the backyard…

So yes, wonderful week, sorry to see it end, but I think we’re all happy to be home and getting back into our normal routines.

Mostly.

(And there’s more photos of all sorts of other stuff from the last month or so right here.)